Group identities are actively produced through everyday social practices. Hindu is a wide label covering many different communities: not only Vaisnavas and Saivas, who are indeed Hindus, but also dalits, and even Buddhists and Jains are sometimes included in this definition, particularly for political aims Read more Notwithstanding the secular definition of the Indian State, one has to be defined as Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Parsi, Buddhist, Jain, or tribal, et cetera if one is none of the above, then s/he is labeled as Hindu.

Even for people who are atheist, or agnostic, it is very difficult to be simply a citizen of India. In fact, whether one likes it or not, in India one is born into a religion. The novel can be described as a literary portrayal of the point of view of the academic about the nation and the construction of identity in contemporary India, because all the issues raised in it are connected to the problem of defining one’s own identity in relation to the collective identity of the nation, with special reference to religious communities. Characters in the novel voice doubts and questions that worry the intelligentsia. Throughout the novel, the barriers of inter-racial friendship in a colonial context are explored vividly posing the question of whether it is possible for an Englishman and an Indian to ever be friends, at least within the context of British colonialism.Gïtanjalï Srï’s Hindi novel Hamärä sahar us baras Our Town That Year, published in 1998) presents a story placed in a town that could be anywhere and everywhere in north India, and in a time that could be any time since the 1980s, up to the demolition of the BäbrI masjid1 in Ayodhya in 1992 and its bloody aftermath. E.M Forster’s A Passage to India represents the dichotomy between the Indian and British cultural aspects focusing the reciprocal relationship between the British colonies and the Indians in Chandapore and highlighting the contrast between the Indian and the European ideology. It also exposes the British inherent preconception toward Indians depicting the English characters as awesomely racially prejudiced, priggish, and inhumanly snobbish to the native inhabitants. It highlights the impact of ‘Englishness’ on the indigenous culture and identity. A Passage to India like every colonial discourse privileges the Europe and the European as ‘Us’, while the Indians and their culture are presented as inferior and ‘Other’. Forster portrays the colonizer’s ideology of superiority of White race and its culture and the constructed inferiority of India and Indians in this novel. E.M Forster’s A Passage to India portrays a colonial India under British imperialism, before its liberation from the occidental colonial rule.

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